Organizations such as on-line retailers, Internet service providers, search providers, financial institutions, universities and other computing-intensive organizations often conduct computer operations from large scale computing facilities. Such computing facilities house and accommodate a large amount of server, network, and computer equipment to process, store, and exchange data as needed to carry out an organization's operations. Typically, a computer room of a computing facility includes many server racks.
Each server rack, in turn, includes many servers as well as associated computer equipment and computer components. Some known rack systems include 40 rack-mounted components.
One category of rack-mounted components addresses storage needs. Some servers include a number of mass storage devices in the form of hard disk drives (for example, eight or more hard disk drives) to provide adequate data storage. Typically, the hard disk drives for servers are of a standard, off-the-shelf type.
For some applications, however, tape drives are still desired because magnetic tape provides a preferred storage option in some circumstances. For example, tape storage can be more robust, especially for long term storage, more secure, less expensive to operate (in part due to lower energy use) and of equivalent capacity as competing disk drive storage technologies.
There is a need, however, to provide a tape drive server having a high density of tape drives that is easy to integrate among other components in a modern large scale-computing facility.